P.J. Parrish, as a crime writer, is a powerhouse – 10 New York Times bestsellers with her Louis Kincaid thrillers, the first, Dark of the Moon, out in 2000; and the most recent, The Little Death, out just this year.
The pronoun “her” suggests Parrish is one person. She’s actually two – sisters, Kristy Montee of [...]

Chicagoan Rich Lindberg is a real crime writer. He writes true crime, not fiction.
And he’s got a stack of true crime books to his credit, ranging from his history of the Chicago Police Department – To Serve and Collect . . . collecting bribes, you betcha – to Shattered Sense of Innocence, a study of [...]

Chicago crime writer Frances McNamara rides again, with her second historical mystery, Death at Hull House. The story, published in December, is set in and around Chicago’s best known settlement house – Hull House – more than a century ago.
Once again Emily Cabot is McNamara’s amateur detective.
Cabot appeared in McNamara’s first mystery out a year [...]

There are lots of well-known Donald Evanses – the artist known for his hand-painted postage stamps of fictional countries, the 34th U.S. Secretary of Commerce, the bassist for Lynyrd Skynyrd, the software engineer, the telecommunications lawyer, and the Chicago crime writer.
All right, Donald Evans the-Chicago-crime-writer is not well known. He only broke into the club [...]

“It’s not about sex. It’s about forensics,” Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan told a Japanese interviewer in a recent episode of the Fox Network show, “Bones”.
“It is about sex,” the interviewer responded.
The episode’s premise is that Bones has written a mystery – the characters based loosely on herself and her colleagues in the fictional Jeffersonian Institute [...]

Kiss Carson, Cameo Sunset Brown, Jack Kilborn, and Terry Devane are not real people.
Well, Kilborn and Devane aren’t, that I know. Kilborn is a pen name for Joe Konrath and Devane for Jeremiah Healy.
Kiss Carson could be a real name. She writes fantasy romance novels. But, come on, what father is going to name his [...]

Remember, a couple weeks ago, I told you about friend Jean Arnold’s request for advice for her granddaughter on what she should do to become a writer. Granddaughter Hannah McLay Arnold is 12 years old, an avid reader and storyteller. And, yes, she writes.
From mystery writer Pepper Smith: “Keep reading. Keep writing what you would [...]

Wouldn’t you just love to sit in a classroom and listen to William Faulkner expound on whatever he wanted to expound on?
It’s a little hard to do because Faulkner died in 1962.
But not impossible.
Faulkner gave a series of lectures at the University of Virginia in the 1957-’58 when he was the university’s first writer-in-residence. The [...]

For fans of William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor mystery series – and I’m one of them – Krueger announced big news on his website this month. He won’t retire Cork, as he said he would a year and a half ago.
Krueger wanted time to write a big stand-alone thriller that would get him a movie [...]

Yesterday, I told you about my friend Jean Arnold asking for advice: What can I tell my 12-year-old granddaughter, who loves storytelling and writing, that will help her become a better writer?
We ask the same thing for ourselves when we go to a writer’s conference . . . oh successful writer – you got a [...]